What's Life Without a Little Adventure?
by Alphearia
Summary: King Mickey sends his two most trusted explorers out on a mission to find out more information about a man named Xehanort and other things related to the keyblade. Action, adventure, and mystery await these two young explorers as they brave new worlds.


Disclaimer: I OWN NOTHING. Except maybe Krinjhe and Alané. I made them up xD Although Krinjhe is the name of a guy from a Final Fantasy game, he isn't the same person...

Author's Note: This was written in response to a picture prompt on The Onigiri Novelists. It's from the fandom Kingdom Hearts, but it doesn't have too much to do with the story... Who knows, I might make this into a mini series if I feel like it.

_Frozen Palace_

* * *

"Is this the place?"

"It has to be, man. Just look at it. It's exactly like the description Riku gave us."

My mind flicked back to our brief visit at Destiny Islands. Riku remembered a place that he got a glimpse of while Xehanort was possessing his heart. He said that this place held a mass collection of information on everything the man had researched. King Mickey sent my partner, Krinjhe, and me on an expedition to hunt this place down. All we had were what it looked like, a towering palace on the edge of an icy slope. It took us forever to find it, but finally we found it in one of the mythology books at the castle library. The place used to be the home of the Snow Folk in a far off distant world that's now long forgotten. People thought that the world no longer existed. Yet here we were, looking at the frozen palace of the now extinct Snow Folk.

"But how do we get up there?" I asked Krinjhe. He laughed and handed me a grappling hook and some rope.

"We climb! That's how," he connected our harnesses together and twisted the thick cord of the hook around his hand. Spinning it rapidly, he swiftly let go of it and I watched as it sailed through the massive blizzard until a loud thud sounded in the air. I never did get how he could do that so well... Krinjhe pulled on the rope a few times before hooking the cord around our waists so we wouldn't plummet to our icy deaths.

We quickly ran to the side of the slope and began climbing. The snow was hard to grip, but we were pros at this by now. After all, the King wouldn't send his best explorers out on such a risky expedition so confidently otherwise, would he?

The blizzard was the biggest obstacle. It was a good thing I convinced Krinjhe to wear our huge parkas for this one. The winds beat at my back and I could still feel the cold biting through the thick material of my parka. I glanced over to Krinjhe and could tell he felt the same.

Krinjhe lived for the climb and the adventure. I lived for the exploring and what we find at the end of each journey. We loved being the first people to officially explore an area.

I grabbed his hand and he helped me up the edge of the cliff. I unhooked the grappling hook and placed it in his backpack. He did the same with our ropes and harnesses.

I gasped when I turned around. The palace was colossal. The carvings were exactly like in they were in _The Book of the Snow Folk_. Krinjhe walked up to me.

"Amazing..." he breathed. All I could do was nod.

"We should hurry inside before we freeze to death." I felt the cold biting through as I recovered from my shock. He nodded and we ran to the side of the building. The stairs were slightly bigger than we were used to, but we ran up with no problem. Strangely enough, no snow covered the stairs.

"I feel some sort of massive power radiating from this building," he said.

"I know...I wonder if it's the power of the Snow Folk."

"Can't find out until we get inside," he said running up to the door. It was large and made of a metallic, yet wood like substance that was intricately carved with ancient symbols. Krinjhe could barely budge the door. I tried to help, but it just wouldn't open.

"Let me check the book."

We huddled close to the wall so the wind wouldn't touch us. The cold was far more bearable that way, especially since no snow was up here.

I grabbed _The Book of the Snow Folk_ from my backpack and opened it up to the table of contents. I read through the scribbled writing until I found one that was called _Snow Language_. A picture of the door appeared under the title and I read the words underneath.

"These carvings are words!" I breathed out my revelation. Standing up, I looked at the door in the picture. "The translation is underneath the picture in this book. See, look here, Krinjhe." He stood up and looked to the words I was pointing at on the door. I moved my finger to the words underneath the picture. "These carvings say _ilies delastia mortesa delan eran omatista Ery Lancia_."

"And that means..." He asked, confused.

"It means _your answers lie within the walls of The Snow,_" I looked up at the wall. "They called themselves _Ery Lancia_. It means The Snow."

"Would these be the walls of The Snow?"

"I guess... Oh look!" I pointed to a section in the book. "It says to open the door, you have to put your hand here..." I placed my hand underneath the words _Ery Lancia_ on the door. The carvings glowed for a slight second before the door slowly opened before us. We looked at each other with shocked faces and wide eyes.

"That is...so...cool..." Krinjhe said.

"I know, right?" I walked through the door, causing a reaction to occur.

All the candles in the room began to flare up with a bright white flame, circling around and around the room all the way up until they reached the giant silver chandelier on the ceiling. Krinjhe whistled when he saw the interior. The place was like a giant library. Books and papers were everywhere, sitting next to beautiful candles on silver pedestals. A large marble stairway led up both sides, leading to even more books on multiple levels of the castle.

"Where do we begin..." He trailed off. I shrugged and walked towards a table.

"I guess we split up now. Holler if you find anything."

I read the spines of the books. They seemed to be from the Snow Folk, or _Ery Lancia._ I couldn't make out what the writing said, but I think they were logs on daily life, weather patterns, and the massive intelligence they held. I ran to each shelf on the ground floor, Krinjhe working a few floors above. So far I found nothing relating to Xehanort or anything modern. Everything was about the _Ery Lancia_.

"Hey, Alané, you might want to come check this out..." I placed my book back where I got it and ran up to the top floor where Krinjhe was. Again, the stairs were slightly bigger than usual.

"What'd you find?" He held up a notebook with a name scribbled on it. I gasped as I read the name. Xehanort. We finally found the treasure trove. I flipped it open and saw mounds of information of everyone.. King Mickey, Ansem, Organization XIII, Roxas, Riku, Sora! It was unbelievable.

"I think we found what we were looking for..." I placed the notebook securely in the bottom of my backpack so it wouldn't get lost and shifted through the notebooks on the shelf. A lot of them contained information on the heartless and other dealings with the dark. Krinjhe and I took as many notebooks as we could find and packed them in our bags.

"But why here in this place?" Krinjhe asked, looking around the room.

"I guess because no one knows about it," I replied.

"It's too easy..."

He had a point. It had been too easy to find so much information with no trouble. Why hadn't there been trouble?

"What was that?" I heard a small fluttering sound close to us. Krinjhe shushed me and looked around.

His eyes widened as the books began to fly off the shelves, papers tearing themselves out and rushing towards us. Krinjhe grabbed my hand and we ran down the stairs, escaping the torrent of books as they burst into the air on each floor. My eyes flicked up and the large room was swarming with papers and spines of now empty books. The papers swirled together, forming a tornado. The massive winds nearly pulled me towards it, but Krinjhe gripped my hand tighter and rushed to the door. The fire from the candles and the chandelier lit the papers and the tornado flared up with a fierce cold flame. The door was slowly closing and we ran out mere seconds before it slammed shut.

We were able to breathe for a moment until we heard a creaking sound coming from the building. It was collapsing. We ran towards the slope and Krinjhe jumped off, sliding down the ice. I followed suit, and we were lucky to reach the ground in one piece. The building was cracking and chunks fell down the slope behind us. The tornado of flame surged through the wreckage and steadily made its way towards us, growing more massive in size as it picked up snow. Luckily, we made it to our Gummi Ship just in time and launched it into warp mode just as the tornado reached where we were.

I leaned back in my seat and Krinjhe rested his head against the wheel. Our Gummi hovered just above the world. We burst out into laughter as we replayed the experience in our heads. Krinjhe lifted his head and stared at the world below. We could just barely see the tornado ravaging the world.

"That was fun," he said after he caught his breath. I playfully hit him on the shoulder and laughed.

"Yeah sure...we almost died!" I said dramatically.

"That's what makes adventuring so much fun!" He said back.

I looked at our backpacks on the floor beside us.

"At least we got what we came here for..."

"I hope anyway. Not like we have much choice to go back," he gestured to the world below us. The land seemed barren and the palace looked completely destroyed. Although the world was slowly growing brighter.

"Hey is that world..." The Land of the Snow Folk emitted a bright light and we covered our eyes. When I opened mine, the world was gone. "Where did..."

"I don't know..." Krinjhe replied. He was about as clueless as I was. "I don't think it's gone though."

"But how can a world...move?" I asked.

"Better save that one for the King."

"Oh right, the King. I almost forgot about that," I shuffled in my seat until I got comfortable. "We should head back."

"Let's go," Krinjhe pressed a few buttons and soon we were on warp drive to Disney Castle. He safely landed the ship in the hanger.

"Welcome back!" Chip and Dale said over the intercom. It was nice to be back safe and sound. Krinjhe and I exited the Gummi Ship and waved to the two chipmunks. We made our way down the long corridor to the throne room and entered.

"King Mickey! We found some interesting things." I shouted as I ran down the carpet.

"What did you find, Alané?" Krinjhe and I opened our backpacks and piled all the notebooks on the floor. King Mickey jumped out of his chair and picked up the one I originally looked at. "Xehanort, huh?"

"Yes, sir," Krinjhe said. "This is all we found. The palace destroyed itself before we could look some more." King Mickey opened the notebook and flipped through the pages.

"These could answer most of our questions. You both did well. I was sure you wouldn't let me down!" He said. Krinjhe and I smiled.

"I can't help but think there was something more in there though...something we couldn't find," Krinjhe mused.

"I feel the same way. Like that source of power that we felt. What was that?" I asked.

"Source of power?" King Mickey looked at me. I nodded my head.

"We felt this strange power when we approached the door. We were planning on checking it out, but well...like Krinjhe said, the palace destroyed itself. Then the world disappeared in a flash of light."

"Flash of light... I wonder if the legends are true then," the King set down the book.

"Legends?" I've heard of a few of the legends of the Snow Folk, but none like this... I glanced over to Krinjhe, but he seemed oblivious as well.

"I don't know everything about the legend...but they say if you can access the cache of power hidden in the palace, then you can make it work to your will."

"So someone didn't want us getting too close.." Krinjhe said to himself. The King nodded.

"That someone must be still around...this could be a problem for all of us..."


End file.
